When To Edit?

I’m sure that title has many of you thinking, “Um, she’s finally lost it. You edit when you’re done.”
And my response is: No. You edit all the time.
I know I’ve been going over a lot of what we typically call “pre-writing” or “outlining” but, in all honesty, it’s all editing. Editing has approximately a dozen definitions, many of which mention organizing and coherence (pre-writing and outlining). When you truly ingest all the definitions, you begin to understand that you’re actually editing from the moment you have a spark of an idea all the way until that “Publish” button is pressed. But, just how do you edit the entire time?

I do agree with many, many writing experts that you shouldn’t be so concerned about details that you never write because you’re paralyzed that it isn’t perfect. Write. You need to put words on paper, or else learning about editing is a moot point. I know that’s a “Duh!” to all of us, but, seriously, we authors are really, REALLY good at mind screwing ourselves into oblivion. We want to have our babies be SO flawless that we can get wrapped up in the details and never put pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard.
Once your fingers have begun the process of translating scattered, sensible words from the imagination to the paper or screen, there is definitely editing that can be done that will not pull you off into plot twist and character hijack hell. (You all know what I’m talking about, those sparkly squirrel sidetrack moments.)

Read the entire article in the October 2018 issue of InD'Tale magazine.

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